Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is
pouring money into a television advertising campaign defending
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose
primary fight against a Tea Party-backed rival is shaping up as
a test of establishment efforts to reclaim the Republican Party.

The business lobby will spend about $180,000 on a 10-day
statewide blitz beginning Dec. 2 on behalf of McConnell, a five-term Republican, said a person familiar with the plans who asked
not be identified because the ad buy hasn’t been announced.

McConnell faces twin challenges next year in his re-election bid. He is competing against Matt Bevin, a Louisville
businessman backed by the small-government movement, in the May
20 Republican primary contest. The winner of that race will
square off with Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan
Grimes in the November general election.

The Chamber, which spent $36 million to influence last
year’s congressional races, is wading into Republican primary
fights to back candidates focused on economic issues.

Its first foray into bolstering a pro-business candidate
facing a Tea Party candidate came earlier this month in Alabama,
where it endorsed former state Senator Bradley Byrne and spent
more than $200,000 supporting him in the final days of a
Republican primary for a Mobile-area U.S. House seat.

Chamber Victory

The effort bore fruit; Byrne, an attorney who pitched
himself as a pragmatist, defeated property developer Dean Young,
who questioned President Barack Obama’s birthplace and pledged
to shut down the government a second time over the 2010
Affordable Care Act. Byrne is favored to win the Dec. 17 general
election over a Democratic opponent.

Neither the Chamber nor McConnell’s campaign responded to
requests for comment on the group’s plans in Kentucky. Politico
first reported the business group’s entry into the race.

Bevin is working to portray McConnell, a Senate insider who
is adept at cutting deals with Democrats, as insufficiently
committed to core Republican principles such as cutting
government spending.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former Republican
Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has endorsed Bevin, saying
he has “Ted Cruz-like courage” -- a reference to the first-term Texas senator who led the charge to tie defunding Obamacare
to keeping the federal government operating, leading to last
month’s 16-day partial shutdown.

The United Kentucky Tea Party, a coalition of local groups
affiliated with the anti-tax movement that is also backing
Bevin, last month dubbed the primary a “national fight against
out-of-control big-government Republicans.”

Rob Engstrom, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce political
director, said following the partial government shutdown that
the business lobby would use the Alabama primary and other races
in the coming year to “send a message” that it was willing to
put political money behind pragmatists who advance its economic
goals.